Viacom: We goofed on Colbert parody takedown notice; case dismissed

Viacom admits that it erred when it asked YouTube to pull a clip parodying …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Viacom have agreed to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Viacom of misusing the DMCA after the entertainment company admitted it erred in issuing a takedown notice to YouTube. The EFF and the Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project filed the lawsuit after Viacom issued the DMCA takedown notice over a clip parodying comedian Stephen Colbert, whose Colbert Report airs on Viacom's Comedy Central channel.

After the clip was taken down, the EFF and Viacom engaged in a war of words, with Viacom saying that the takedown notice "most likely did not come from us." The EFF responded by pointing out YouTube's notice that the video had been removed "due to a copyright claim by Viacom International."

"With Viacom sending more than 160,000 DMCA takedown notices, it may not even be aware which videos it told YouTube to remove," said the EFF. "If that's right, then Viacom will inevitably end up censoring some perfectly legitimate videos—surely, the MoveOn/Brave New Films video is not the only example of a fair use that got caught in Viacom's driftnet."

Viacom later conceded that it was indeed the source of the takedown notice, and has said that it issued the notice in error. Before it issues a takedown notice, Viacom says it will manually review the video in question and that it will educate its reviewers about fair use to cut down on erroneous takedown notices. The company also says that it does not challenge the use of its content if it is "creative, newsworthy or transformative" and is "a limited excerpt for noncommercial purposes."

Viacom will also set up a new website and "e-mail hotline" for complaints about DMCA misuse, promising to review all complaints within one business day. The company will ask the website in question to put a video back up if it determines that it issued a takedown notice by mistake.

"If copyright owners are going to be sending hundreds of thousands of DMCA takedown notices, they also have a responsibility to protect the legitimate free speech rights of the citizen creators who rely on platforms like YouTube," said EFF senior intellectual property attorney Fred von Lohmann in a statement. "By choosing to respect newsworthy and transformative uses of their materials—and establishing a simple process that lets improperly targeted users get their material back up quickly—Viacom has taken important steps toward meeting that responsibility. We hope other media companies will follow Viacom's lead."